The average woman doesn’t wash her pyjamas for HOW long?!

 A new and slightly alarming poll has found that men and women wear the same pyjamas for far too many nights in a row.

The research found that on average, men wear the same pyjamas for almost fourteen days, while women wear theirs for seventeen nights before throwing them in the laundry.

Given that we sweat a LOT at night, this finding has alarmed health experts, with Professor Sally Bloomfield from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine saying: “Pyjamas are against your skin. You shed skin cells at a vast rate all the time. They are full of microorganisms. We all have skin and gut organisms that are usually not harmful on our skin and in our gut. But if they get into the wrong place they can cause problems.”

The professor went on to say that due to this, wearing the same pyjamas so often can actually cause quite a lot of nasty infections that we definitely do NOT want, including cystitis and MRSA: “Quite a lot of us carry staphylococcus bacteria, which can cause infections if they get into cuts and bruises. We all carry E Coli bacteria in our bowel. Again, most strains are not harmful. But if they get into the urinary tract they can cause infection. That would cause cystitis (a urinary tract infection). Some people carry MRSA, which is obviously gets very hard to treat, especially with antibiotic resistance." Now that is scary!

So what are women’s excuses for wearing their pyjamas so often? Well, it all comes down to having too many it would seem! More than half of the women asked said that they alternate between a number of pyjamas and so forget which ones haven’t been washed, and which have.

The remaining number of women, 51 per cent said that they don’t wash their pyjamas all that often as they have only worn them for a few hours each night.

We’re sure that after reading these alarming statistics and warning from a health expert we'll all be washing our pyjamas a lot more often!